At a younger age, we’re inspired to seek out our “lane” in life, the exercise or interest that encapsulates who we’re to our core. Deliberately or unintentionally, stated lane turns into our identification. Once we attain highschool, our lanes are the electives we select—sports activities, drama, choir, cheerleading, band. Identities then change into jock, inventive, geek, or in style. Then, in school, the lane turns into our main, which then turns to our profession, which in society is our identification. We verify this principle by asking individuals, “What do you do?” once we meet them for the primary time. As if all we have to find out about an individual could be wrapped right into a four-word query.
For myself, I knew being a journalist was my “lane,” however after a 12 months of rejection letters, I used to be caught between a rock known as insecurity and a tough place known as despair. “Who am I if not connected to this?” was the query ringing in my coronary heart, and to my shock, I didn’t know the reply.
That’s the factor about rejection, it rapidly reveals you the place you set your life’s worth.
One of many equally most enjoyable and harmful issues about my technology is that now we have been given a singular alternative to share each day what we’re doing in life. The place individuals we do and don’t know comply with alongside on our life journey purely out of their curiosity within the identities now we have constructed for ourselves.
The place the subject was as soon as only a passing dialog starter to state what you do for a residing, it’s now one thing to construct a platform upon, to persuade individuals that you’re price figuring out, and price following.
But when the dream by no means comes true, if we by no means get the job, if we solely get rejection letters, will individuals nonetheless watch, nonetheless comply with, nonetheless like what now we have to supply—a human making an attempt their finest?
This was the crossroads I discovered myself at within the late summer time of 2023 as I anxiously awaited what can be my tenth rejection letter of the 12 months.
Whereas I want I may say I brushed the mud off my ft and obtained again up after that final rejection, I didn’t. I sat on the bottom, accumulating the mud, and questioned all the things. What was I made for? What was my function? What do I do if I by no means get my foot within the door? Will I be pleased if I by no means get to say, “I’m a journalist,” on the finish of that inevitable query?
After many days and nights of sulking in my despair, I lastly realized that I had no clue who I used to be. So, I started asking a brand new query: what do you do once you’re making an attempt to study who an individual is? The very first thing that popped into my thoughts was relationship.
While you go on a date, you ask many questions in hopes that you simply study who an individual is and determine whether or not or to not proceed seeing them. Whereas the query of what you do for a residing could come up, it’s simply considered one of many issues that make up who an individual is. And that was precisely what I wanted to do.
I wanted to ask myself inquiries to reframe what I believed identification regarded like.
Slowly, I started to take notes about issues I used to be studying about myself, issues that I might observe if relationship myself.
I stored these items tucked away in an iPhone be aware and, after a month, got here away studying new particulars about me.
Who’s Heather?
- Her favourite artist is Monet.
- She cries each time she thinks one thing is gorgeous and shifting.
- Sitting round a desk together with her closest mates and sharing a meal felt like a hug to her soul.
- She loves spending Saturday mornings at her native bakery.
- When she laughs too exhausting, she snorts.
- She at all times does a contented dance after the primary chew of a meal.
- She seems at life by way of rose-colored glasses, and she or he thinks about life as if she is an writer narrating a e book.
The record went on and on.
By the point I had constructed up a considerable record of issues that made up who I used to be, the much less connected I felt to the rejection. This made room for me to re-evaluate what I wished and revel in in life.
I compelled myself to jot down what I favored about journalism and what I didn’t like. It turns on the market was rather a lot I didn’t like, however there was additionally an thought of journalism that I liked. I discovered that I liked writing however in a special type, and I finally had sufficient room to consider different “lanes” that I by no means checked out earlier than as a result of they appeared like extra foolish pursuits.
A 12 months of rejection was one of the vital painful however refining issues I’ve ever gone by way of, and it has formed how I’ve entered 2024. For the primary time in six years, I don’t have a purpose connected to a profession ladder that wants climbing. However as a substitute, I’m solely centered on pursuing issues that deliver me pleasure, peace, relaxation, and contentment.
At a younger age, we’re inspired to seek out our “lane” in life, the exercise or interest that encapsulates who we’re to our core, and what I’ve discovered is that we as people are too intricate and complicated of beings to have one lane or identification.
Some days I’m a author, who sits tucked right into a nook of a espresso store planning the main points of a brief story. On different days I’m a hostess assembling a tablescape for the newest ceremonial dinner I’ve deliberate.
And the identical is true for you.
You’re a good friend, sister, mom, daughter, baker, comforter, lover of nature, and all issues pink wrapped into one.
As we proceed into this new 12 months, could now we have the braveness to reframe our identities to truly be a mirrored image of all of the fantastic and messy little items that make up, “you.”
